Food Insecurity In Malawi

The complexity of global food security is illustrated by the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) definition: “(i) the availability of sufficient quantities of food of appropriate quality, supplied through domestic production or imports; (ii) access by individuals to adequate resources for acquiring appropriate foods for a nutritious diet; (iii) utilization of food through adequate diet, clean water, sanitation, and health care to reach a state of nutritional well-being where all physiological needs are met; and (iv) stability, because to be food secure, a population, household or individual must have access to adequate food at all times”1 .

According to the state of the world food insecurity report, about 795 million

With about 80 percent of livelihoods dependent on agriculture, the population is highly vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters such as annual dry spells and flooding – Malawi experienced both in 2015 with particularly severe floods in the south affecting as many as 1 million people. Large parts of Malawi continue to suffer from food insecurity on an annual basis, particularly during the lean season (usually between December and March), due to high food prices and insufficient household crop production caused by prolonged dry spells and/or flooding. According to the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee, an estimated 2.83 million people will experience acute food insecurity during the 2015/16 lean season. Women are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity as their extensive home-based workload and care work does not usually translate into economic gain, limiting their ability to afford a balanced diet.

Agriculture is vitally important to Malawi, employing 80% of the workforce, producing nearly 35% of GDP and 80% of export earnings. However, the food security situation is very unstable: 9.5% of the population (1.8m people) were food insecure in 2013/2014; and just under 25% of Malawi’s population were ‘undernourished’ between 2010 and 2012 (WB 2014). Food prices are volatile, Malawi is highly aid dependent, and the population

Most of the studies conducted on resilience in Africa and other developing countries focus only on livelihood groups and spatial analysis with no exploration of the divergences in household resilience across wealth groups and between gender of household heads (Ciani & Romano, n.d.), (Alinovi L., 2010), ( Alinovi et al., 2009), (Gambo Boukary, Diaw, & Wünscher, 2016), (Tefera & Kayitakire, 2014). This current study will fill this gab and add to the few researches on household resilience to food insecurity while taking the lead in applying the framework of resilience in the Malawian